As you all know I went down hard a couple of nights ago, and although it looks like it will take some time for my body to heal, I want to start repairing my ride right away.
So the question is, what needs to go and what is OK to stay? It’s a Ti frame with alloy cranks, so I’m pretty sure those are mostly good. Carbon/carbon fork shows no scratches or dings but I’m still a little wary and also wonder about the carbon bars too. Is ther any way (short of taking the carbon parts to the doctor’s office with me to be x-rayed this afternoon) to determine if these parts are still safe? the stem is forged, so that should be good, and I’m hoping that the shifters still work after the major hit that they took. Are there any other things I should look for?
I guess the good news is that I get new wheels out of the deal, so what does everybody recommend?
I don’t know how hard you crashed or where you hit on the bike. But if you hit the fork or the handle bars I would replace them both. I personally just took a small crash and hit my aluminum bars pretty hard on the ground. I replaced them even though there was no visible damage. I figured that was one part of my bike I did not want to fail no matter what. I would err on the side of caution. If your fork or bars fail going at 35+ MPH down a hill you can die. Some guy in San Diego died recently when his fork failed.
Replace the carbon fork!!! I had a Kestrel EMS fail…and it ain’t pretty!! When the fork fails the first you’ll notice it is when you are on the ground waking up. I went straight over the handlebars and the first thing to hit was my head. Thank God I was going from a near stop (track stand) to a “jump” to make a traffic light and was not going very fast. One hard push of the pedals and the right blade snapped clean in half.